Australia's Prime Minister Tony Abbott says the search area for the missing Malaysia Airlines passenger jet has been narrowed down.
Speaking from China on Friday, Mr Abbott said authorities are "very confident" that signals being monitored by search teams from eight countries are coming from the aircraft's black box.
Australian Defence crew are continuing to look for any signs of debris. Photo: AFP / Australian Defence
Tony Abbott says searchers are confident the signals are from the black box. Photo: AAP
The mystery of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, carrying 239 people when it vanished on 8 March after flying thousands of kilometres off its Kuala Lumpur to Beijing route, has sparked the most expensive search and rescue operation in aviation history.
"We have very much narrowed down the search area and we are very confident the signals are from the black box," Mr Abbott said in Beijing.
The search has been reduced to two zones totalling 47,000 square kilometres, about 2000km north-west of Perth.
No debris has been found yet and it is believed the plane crashed in the Indian Ocean. Mr Abbott cautioned that narrowing down the position of the flight recorder is not the same as recovering the wreckage from almost 4.5km down in the sea.
Mr Abbott said the signals are starting to fade, though and would not say more until after he has spoken to China's president on Friday evening, the ABC reports. The search for the plane is massive news in China as many passengers on MH370 are Chinese.
On Thursday, an Australian P3 Orion aircraft detected another possible signal from a black box recorder near the Australian Navy ship the Ocean Shield.
In recent days, four other signals had been detected in an area less than 40km apart by a US Navy towed pinger locator deployed by the Ocean Shield.
This has seen the search area in the Indian Ocean narrowed from 75,000 square kilometres to about 58,000 square kilometres. Officials have yet to say by how much further the search zone will be reduced.
